


The Most Resilient Parasite

by YouLookGoodInLeather



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, Co-workers, Dream Sex, Eventual Romance, M/M, Slow Burn, Workplace Relationship, forger!Rhysand, point man!Lucien
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 11:48:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12365109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouLookGoodInLeather/pseuds/YouLookGoodInLeather
Summary: When they first meet, Rhys thinks that Lucien is the man of his dreams, quite literally.__________________________Rhys might hate Tamlin but he has money and a dream and more specifically access to the dreams of others. He swears that's all he's here for, all he cares for, and yet there's a redhead haunting him around every astral corner.





	The Most Resilient Parasite

**Author's Note:**

> posting this to try and motivate me to finish this WIP because I really love this AU and Inception in general. Also, Rhycien.

Right from day one, Rhysand thinks Tamlin is the worst. 

It’s Friday night, maybe Saturday morning, neither Rhys nor the broken clock behind the bar knows. The pub he’s in is the type that’s equally gloomy and choked with smoke no matter the time of day, just another shithole in England’s rainy estates. Everything about it stinks of crippling poverty swept under the rug of prudish first world country pride, but there’s money here if you know where to look. It’s his job to know where to look. 

He’s turning the same tricks he’s been playing for an hour, slowly clearing out the other men in relentless poker rounds at the corner table. Though Rhys is taking his time and lazily nursing his drink, he’s already won back the money he spent travelling for the past five months. Perhaps by the end of the night he’ll even make a dent in his alcohol-related debt.

These are the kinds of games he normally plays for fun, but he hasn’t taken a job for a year now and he has never been the kind to give up his particular lifestyle no matter the circumstances. His cousin Mor always offers to lend him money, but she’s only got so much. She’s over in London working an office job and living a real life with bills that need paying and dresses that need mending. He doesn’t know how to ask for things, and every time he’s broke he buys her presents and pretends otherwise. 

But he’s got to keep moving, keep up the friction. No chance can he slow down enough to let his brain actually  _ think _ . In his eyes, stooping to the sin of counting cards on a few good-for-nothing drug peddlers is still better than taking on a real job. Especially after last time.

It’s all going well until the blonde man with the too square jaw points out Rhys has been hiding cards up his sleeves. True, Rhys is sloppy with drink and maybe he did fumble that last card a bit, but that’s no reason to humiliate him. Sadly, the rest of the men in the game - three skinheads in duster jackets and threadbare jeans that don’t match their polished brogues and rolexes - don’t see it that way. 

Five minutes later and Rhys is taking a beating in the back street. It stinks like piss and he endures knuckles to the face over and over again. He learned long ago there’s no point fighting back. All he can focus on is an emaciated mutt staring at him from the far corner of the yard, yellow eyes locked on him, drool dripping in rivulets from the corners of its gaping maw. The beast is unflinching, even as Rhys yells out in pain, a steel-capped toe booting him hard in the stomach. 

The blonde from the table stands guard by the backdoor, watching. He displays no reaction, aside from wrinkling his nose in disgust when Rhys vomits up acid and blood. With his huge muscles and generically handsome broad face, his onlooker is easy to hate. He has the same stare as that damn dog. Rhys thinks he might kill the bastard. 

Yet when the skinheads have retrieved their money and grown bored of blood and wandered off, the blonde remains, and Rhys can’t bring himself to commit murder. He settles for spitting in his general direction. “You still here?” He remarks, hoping to get the man to go so that he might patch himself up in peace.

The blonde doesn’t move, doesn’t even speak. “Fucking sadists,” Rhys hisses under his breath. The man might have lost him everything, but Rhys will be damned if he lets him shame him any further. He choses to ignore the arsehole as he removes his paisley button-down shirt and rips it to shreds, using the scraps to bandage his wounds. The blonde offers no assistance. 

“Can I help you, darling?” Rhysand forces himself not to wince - much - as he ties off the gaping wound across his forearm. Fingers yellowed by a month of chain-smoking shitty rolled cigarettes, he palpitates his rib cage, checking to see if any are cracked. The blonde watches. 

“How would you like a job?” He asks, his voice as bland as his face. Rhys laughs before telling him to go fuck himself. 

“I need a forger,” The blonde continues, ignoring him. “Everything is set up. It shouldn’t take more than a day's preparation. Standard infiltration and seduction.” There’s a sick sensation in Rhys’ stomach as the man describes what for him should be a dream - no pun intended. A job already sorted, already clean and slick and done, and all he has to do is get into someone’s pants. It’s practically made for him. 

He’s low on money. Low in the sense that he has jack shit, not even enough to get back to Mor’s place to recover. “I don’t do last minute jobs,” he says, inspecting his busted lip with two cautious fingers. The rest of his face is mostly okay, though he thinks he can feel a black eye brooding beneath the surface, ready to bloom in the morning. 

“Your résumé would suggest otherwise.” He goes to ask this infuriatingly cryptic asshole just who he is and how he knows who Rhys is, but then he hears those magic words. “But we’ll pay you well for it. Very well.” 

Rhys isn’t stupid. He asks for numbers up front. When he gets them, he has to sigh. 

“I’m in.” Beggars cannot not be choosers, and it seems he isn’t cut out for having morals. He straightens so that the blood smeared across his beaten frame, soft and bloated from a year of drinking and forgetting, gleams in the awful fluorescent lighting, cast by the flickering striplight tacked above the back door. It is a credit to Rhys’ reputation that the blonde doesn’t question his capabilities when he asks with a grin, “So, who am I to make my maiden?”    

And as easily as that, Rhysand begins to work for Tamlin.

 

* * *

 

When they first meet, Rhys thinks that Lucien is the man of his dreams, quite literally. 

Rhysand has adopted one of his favourite identities for the job. This one’s all in the details: the not-so-subtle too tight tightness of the white T-shirt he has pulled over the planes of his muscular torso, the dark jeans that hug his arse, and most important of all, the way he leans against the counter of the bar and cocks his hips to the side. It’s a classy hotel bar, so it smells like cleaning products and wood varnish, but his presence radiates cheap cologne and even cheaper sex. Rent boy Robert fucks because he’s a shameless cum-slut, and just happens to get paid for it. Rhys plays him well.

The job’s his bread and butter sex appeal play, as promised by the blonde man Rhys now knows as Tamlin. The mark is yet another well-off businessman who made a living exploiting those beneath him, and this at least helps alleviate Rhys’ sense of trepidation. He assures himself over and over again that this won’t be like last time. 

All he has to do is distract the mark with the promise of sex whilst the others on the mission infiltrate the safe up in his room. Worst comes to worst, ‘Robert’ can always take the mark up to a spare room and fuck him there, claim it’s his or another client’s - that always gets them hard. Rhys knows their type; megalomaniacs high on power who come at just the idea of screwing someone else over. Oh the company he keeps. 

He’s waiting for Tamlin to finish up guiding the mark through the dream one level up, planting the right thoughts in his head to bring him down to join them in a way that will encourage the mark to fill the safe with the secrets they need. It shouldn’t take him more than an hour in the first dream, but down in the second level, where time passes twelve times as slowly, Rhys knows he’ll have to wait all night. There have been worse situations. He’s at a bar with time to kill. He can think of a few fun things to do. 

Second drink in and he tries to slow it down by looking around. He hasn’t been able to afford a proper drink in the real world for a long time though, so he sits alone and savours this last glass by himself. It’s a dream, but it’s good. The third goes by too quickly. His forth is called for in a slur.

“Got somewhere to be?” A man beside him remarks. Rhys chooses to ignore him, because projections in dreams always make for such dull, repetitive conversation. All they ever do is recite subconscious bullshit to you, like video game characters stuck with the same three rotating lines of dialogue. Instead, he tries to will himself not to reach for the next glass. Is it really his fault though, when being back lost within dreams dregs back up all of the nightmares?

“Don’t worry,” the man says again, and before Rhys can stop him he swipes the drink from off of the bar top, “I’ll cover your tab.” Dream boys have never done anything like this before, but by this point Rhys is too drunk to care about anything aside from his stolen alcohol. 

“Fuck my damn tab,” Rhys growls, looking over at the man beside him. “Give me back my drink. I need it. For work.”

“The plants need it more than you,” the man says, pouring out the golden contents of that precious drink over a nearby potted plant. “They aren’t half as drowned as you are.”

Rhys doesn’t respond. It has nothing to do with the drunken haze or his own wit, which a dozen years of slaps and bar fights has proven is too sharp for its own good. It has everything to do with the man before him.

The mark’s subconscious is clearly a filthy, filthy place. The projection standing before him can be from only the cruelest mind. Rhysand feels his stomach curdle at the mere sight of him. 

The man, a flaming redhead, is drawn with the most dashing of lines. Narrow hips tailor down from slender shoulders, framing the kind of arse Rhys used to have ten years prior. This man is all slow sideways glances and knowing smiles and delicate, lily white hands. Each digit is long and deftly balancing the now empty glass and oh the things Rhys can imagine those clever hands doing. This is a man carved from classic pornos, yet to make matters worse, he wears not the cliched attire of a pizza delivery boy but rather a fine suit that is cut just a size too large, navy blue waistcoat fastened over a crisp black shirt that presses into the sweet skin of his neck. Rhysand can almost taste the salt there. 


End file.
